TIJUANA 
Shane Pennington's dreams led him west to California, where he found work in Anaheim and planned on joining the military or attending college. Those dreams ended last month, when he was stabbed to death on the beach in Playas de Tijuana.

Now his mother has flown in from Hendersonville, N.C., haunted by questions: What led the 19-year-old to cross into Mexico, and what happened in those final hours?

Baja California authorities said robbery may have been a motive for the attack, but they have reached no conclusions. Because the investigation is ongoing and Pennington's mother has yet to formally identify her son, they did not offer many details about the case yesterday.

On March 23, Pennington had sent his boss a text message that he was ill and at the doctor, said Gayle Boan, secretary at A Cut Above Beef and Seafood, where Pennington began working as a deliveryman last year.

Instead, he stayed with a family friend in Redlands, leaving at 1:15 p.m. “He never said anything about going to Tijuana,” said Theresa Sala, a longtime friend of Pennington's mother. Pennington drove away in the company's refrigerated delivery truck, Sala said. “I don't think he would have gone there alone.”

Pennington's body was found at 6:10 a.m. the next day by a Tijuana patrol officer responding to a call about a man asleep on the beach. According to the Baja California Attorney General's Office, the victim had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck, chest, back and head.

Authorities said they believe he was stabbed on the beach. He had an empty sheath for a knife. Investigators believe he was killed with his own knife, a Winchester that his mother had given him for Christmas.

The medical examiner's office's initial report noted marijuana and alcohol in Pennington's system at the time of his death, according to a source in the Attorney General's Office who asked not be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Friends and co-workers described Pennington as adventurous and extroverted. “He didn't deserve this,” Boan said. “He was a wonderful young man who made friends wherever he went.”

Boan said Pennington had spoken of visiting Tijuana. “He did want to go there at some point, just like all kids want to go down and party and have a good time.”

Pennington's mother, Elizabeth Taylor, expects to identify her son's body Monday. She said her son had minor trouble with the law when he was younger, “mischievous things, it was all dropped.”

Pennington, the oldest of four children, “always wanted to take care of everything,” his mother said. She said he set off across the country last year, hoping to join the military or enroll in college.

“It was the California dream thing of it,” the mother said, “coming out here and doing what he wanted to do.”